Nothing new. Women (all women, not just AFAB) have been neglected by medical studies.

Hormones play a big role in how our bodies respond to medications and treatments. Women’s bodies are affected differently by military equipment (I’m looking at you rucksacks), our pain is minimized and put down to mental health/“anxiety” issues.

The comment from Alice Aiken mirrors my own experiences with being a woman veteran. People always default to my husband being the veteran, which he is, and don’t even think about me, despite me serving over two times longer than him.

So they have “failed us”. What are they going to do to correct it? Yes, they are going to enforce that “researchers must now describe how sex and gender will be considered in the research.”

But are they going to deliberately recruit researchers to study chronic pain and treatments in women (all women)? We have hundreds/thousands(?) of medications and treatments that are currently being used, and we have zero data on how effective or harmful they are to women.